Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life

Monday, October 12, 2015

How the GOP Establishment Allowed the Hijacking of Congress

There have been many post mortems of how the Republican Party got to the point where it now finds itself hostage to extremists who have no desire to govern the nation but instead wreak havoc on the system and increase government paralysis. A piece in the Los Angeles Times rightly lays out the reality that the current hijacking of the House of Representatives was done with the complicity of the so-called GOP establishment. The only thing that it fails to do is to properly tie the descent into insanity with the rise of the Christofascists within the GOP - the very same Christofascists who make up the bulk of the Tea Party saboteurs. Expect nothing to change in the GOP until this lunatic element is eradicated from the GOP or becomes irrelevant. With the would be 2016 GOP presidential candidates prostituting themselves willy nilly to these folks, this is not going to happen any time soon. Logic, reason and a grasp of objective reality simply hold no sway with those living in a fantasy world. Here are column excerpts:

The irony is that McCarthy and Boehner helped many of the rebels get
elected. McCarthy was one of the three leaders of the GOP's “Young Guns”
program, which recruited up-and-coming conservatives for House
elections in 2010 and after. Another was Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a Boehner
deputy who lost his seat when an insurgent defeated him in the
Republican primary. The third, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), is now almost every
Republican's favorite candidate for speaker — but on Friday he said he
wasn't interested.

Boehner wasn't part of the new wave; he was an
old-line conservative who believed in blocking the agenda of a
Democratic president, but also accepted the need to compromise to keep
the federal government running. And that enraged many of the insurgents,
who had promised voters they wouldn't agree to half-measures. They
believe they were sent to Washington to obstruct compromises, not
support them.

Their intransigence produced a series of fruitless crises.

In
2011, they demanded that Boehner refuse to allow a rise in the federal
debt ceiling if Obama and the Democratic-led Senate didn't agree to all
the spending cuts they wanted. The gambit failed. In 2013, they shut the
federal government for 16 days in an attempt to force the repeal of
Obama's health insurance program; that gambit failed too.

After his decision to retire, Boehner denounced the GOP radicals as
“false prophets” who misled their own voters. They “whip people into a
frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know — they know! —
are never going to happen,” he said last week.

But don't feel too bad for him: Boehner stood by while that whipping took place.

“Now
he's saying the House has been hijacked by radicals, but the pilots of
this airline gave the hijackers first-class seats,” Norman J. Ornstein
of the American Enterprise Institute, a longtime Congress-watcher, told
me. “They encouraged them, incited them, promised them things. And now
the hijackers want what they were promised.”

As radical as the insurgents are, it would be wrong to dismiss them
as a fringe group. Even as they antagonized Boehner, they built a
national constituency that may be a majority among grass-roots
Republicans. A Fox News poll last month reported that 62% of GOP primary
voters believe they have been “betrayed” by the party's leaders; 66%
believe leaders have failed to do everything possible to block Obama's
agenda.

The GOP's insurgent impulse, in other words, isn't merely a
result of gerrymandering or conservative microclimates in rural
America. It's a product of the same widespread anger that has made
Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina potential presidential
nominees.

Last week, the insurgents — who have organized themselves as the
Freedom Caucus, with about 40 members — auditioned McCarthy and others
for speaker. As the price for their support, they demanded written
promises from McCarthy: a Freedom Caucus member as his deputy, more
limits on the speaker's power to appoint committee chairmen, no
punishment for members who buck party discipline. McCarthy would have
been crazy to say yes.

The sensible thing at this point might be
for the Republican conference to split. After all, it's already
operating as an unstable coalition of two mini-parties: the Freedom
Caucus and what you might call the Governing Caucus. Republicans will keep their majority — but it still won't be a usable,
workable majority. They'll have the satisfaction of telling their
constituents that they refused to compromise. But they still won't get
anything done.

Translate This Page

Contact Me to Order Title Work

LGBT Legal Services

About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

Disclaimer on Opinions and Content

This Blog contains content that may be innapropriate for readers under the legal age of 18. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE, PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Thank you

This is an opinion and commentary blog and the opinions and contents of this Blog - including opinions expressed concerning opponents of LGBT equality - are the opinions only of the individual blogger and should not be attributed to any other individuals or to any organization of which the blogger is a past or current member.

Followers

PLU Top Gay Blogs

Michael-in-Norfolk disclaims any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, operability, or availability of information or material displayed on this site and does not claim credit for any images or articles featured on this site, unless otherwise noted. All visual content is copyrighted to it's respectful owners. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, and Michael-in-Norfolk does not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site's content. If you own rights to any of the images or articles, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact Michael-in-Norfolk via e-mail and they will be promptly removed. Michael-in-Norfolk contains links to other Internet sites. These links are provided solely as a convenience and are not endorsements of any products or services in such sites, and no information or content in such site has been endorsed or approved by this blog.